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Nasus/Strategy
Skill usage * Nasus' will keep him sustained in the jungle or a solo lane. * Constantly last hitting with will have an enormous impact by the end of a game, and will be your primary source of damage. ** If you are having difficulty last hitting minions with (against strong zoners), request a lane change or a gank. * The damage from will proc on turrets. Use it to quickly take down turrets. * Using on your targets will make it easier to land before using , as greatly reduces the target's armor, making you hit much harder than normal. * is best used to shut down auto-attack dependent champions, slowing them to a crawl and reducing their attack speed dramatically. ** Choose your target wisely (usually a carry) when casting, as the moderate cooldown isn't very forgiving if you choose poorly. ** With high amounts of cooldown reduction, Nasus can almost continuously maintain on the enemy team (5 sec duration, 6.6 sec cooldown). However, enemy tenacity can counter-act this. ** Without any gap-closers or mobility, Nasus relies on his to protect himself from being kited. * Be careful when using near your tower, as it will push the lane and you will lose last-hits. * During the laning phase, will discourage your enemies from farming, but it has a relatively high mana cost. * Nasus's ultimate can be used at the start of team fights as you will be doing constant AoE damage to enemies while gaining attack damage for big hits. It can also be saved for the end of a fight to bait enemies with the health boost (stronger in small fights). * can be used offensively or defensively, use it to catch or escape enemies, as it also gives a massive health boost. * A team with Nasus can kill earlier because his and passive life steal from lets him tank and kill it much more easily. Build usage * Nasus can be itemized as a melee DPS, one shotting machine, as a tank, or as an off-tank, based upon the rest of your team composition. ** Generally speaking, a tanky build is considered optimal on Nasus, due to his naturally high late-game damage from , which also makes him a priority target for the enemy team. * Because lacks the ability to hard gap close into an enemy, grabbing is recommend over as it allows Nasus to effective get close into an enemy unit. * As Nasus relies on as his primary source of damage, it is important to stay in lane in order to continuously farm . Any items to sustain him in lane with mana and health like a are important. Building early resistances like a or a according to the main damage source can allow you to take a little more harass and stay in lane longer. * It is possible to build Nasus into a one shotting machine using , and . * The life steal from grants him sustainability, allowing him to build other items. However, he can still benefit from life steal items since damage procs with life steal: ** should not be ignored simply because of Nasus's innate abilities. In a more offensive build, synergizes well with Nasus's life steal passive and damage and can help deal as well as take more damage if isn't that well farmed. It's also a useful defensive item as well due to the shield passive from the item. ** is a very situational item since is designed for basic attack heavy champions such as and , and most of Nasus's damage comes from dealing large amount of burst damage with in a single basic attack rather than constantly autoattacking your opponent. However, the item's passive and active is useful when facing opponents that benefits from building health such as , , and . * and synergize with the proc on , greatly increasing your damage output. * as well as its components work very well with Nasus. and a can keep an enemy constantly in melee range as well as the area of effect. passive stacks with for more damage and providing more mana to better farm minions. offers some critical strike and attack speed to do more damage and movement speed to stick to enemies. * and offer Nasus cooldown reduction and mana, which allow Nasus to use his more often, as well as giving him armor and an attack speed debuff aura. * gives both the Spellblade passive from and the stats of . However, is considered a bad and also a noob trap item on Nasus by most experienced players, as the splash damage causes Nasus to lose potential stacks from minions. It is better off getting a and a , as this enables farming more stacks than getting an . * Nasus can also be used as an ability power champion, relying on items as and for damage and utility with his and for increased damage with his , while still building defensive items like and . This type of build is more focused on dealing damage to multiple enemies as his both and will deal more damage. ** Whilst generally considered inferior on Summoner's Rift, this type of build is more favorable on other maps due to lack of opportunities there to farm ; this is particularly true of the Howling Abyss. * Do not make the mistake of purchasing or on Nasus as the items have almost no synergy on him whatsoever. Not only do enemies killed by the passive effect not count towards increasing the damage of , but neither the passive nor the active even apply any of the bonus damage of , since the damage they do is based solely on Attack Damage and does not include on-hit effects. More importantly, the splash damage will cause minions to die faster, making it considerably harder for Nasus to farm effectively. ** However, the passive and active do greatly help with Nasus' split-pushing abilities (something he excels at due to 's ability to let him take down turrets rapidly), and also proc the life-steal both from the item itself and from , adding to his survivability in team-fights. All this makes it a relatively effective late-game choice on Nasus in a more offensive build. * Because 's stack-based damage no longer proc's critical strike, this makes armor penetration the only option to increase the infinitely scaling bonus damage. This makes and very good items for late game. is good for the armor shred, cooldown reduction, health, and superior ad compared to the . However, is still viable due to the larger, and more reliable, % armor pen. * is an excellent armor item on Nasus, as it makes him more difficult to kite, which, despite , is still one of his few weaknesses late game. The active also becomes more effective the more resistances you build, making it especially effective on a tanky build. * When itemizing for defenses on , prioritize resistances over straight health, as this will make both your innate life-steal and the bonus health from more effective. With that said, do not neglect to purchase health entirely, as when you have built some resistances, these will cause it to scale rather well. * should be considered in Nasus's build, as it will allow Nasus to effective gap close into enemy and greatly increases his mobility. The item's passive, health regeneration, bonus health, and mana helps Nasus out as well. Recommended builds Runes and Masteries * A typical Nasus rune page should mainly be focused on defense, MR and armor penetration with 5% CDR. Put 6 flat CDR blues, 3 flat MR blue runes, 9 flat defense yellow runes, 9 armor pen red runes and defense or MR Quints. * Consider using life steal Quintessences on Nasus; they are the most effective sustain tool for him. This is because his procs life steal. While the damage of rises, the sustain gets even bigger. Countering * Avoid going into a 1v1 battle against a late game Nasus. It's likely that he will have a lot of stacks, and built lots of tanky items. This combined with his passive, his , and his , means that Nasus wins 1v1 battles against almost all League champions. ** However, Nasus is weak at teamfights, due to his lack of AoE damage, lack of mobility, as well as lack of utility outside (which can only target a single enemy champion at once). Therefore, it is possible to ignore Nasus until you kill all the other enemy team members - then focus Nasus, as he is surprisingly easy to kill when your entire team engages against him. * Nasus's strength comes from his ability to farm . Try to zone him or deny his chance of last-hitting minions. * Champions with strong early game such as , , and can take out Nasus during that phase of game, as Nasus is very weak and has little to no stacks. However, be wary that most of those champions fall off late game and will lose to Nasus once he gets enough stacks and tanky items. ** You can also ask your jungler to camp Nasus. This will too deny him his farm. Nasus is also easy to gank due to his lack of escapes. ** Because sometimes Nasus will inevitably farm and get to his late game, it may not always be a good idea to use an early game champion to try to deny his farm. An alternative strategy then is to use a tank with reliable CC and waveclear such as , , , or . They cannot deny Nasus' farm during the early game, but they can outscale him during teamfights - just stack massive amounts of armor, and use their CC to peel Nasus off an carry during the late game. Nasus will attempt to counter this by splitpushing, though. That's where their waveclear comes in handy: they can clear waves quickly and delay Nasus' splitpushing, buying them time and allowing them to continue helping their team. * Avoid using auto-attack reliant champions against Nasus, as all of them are very vulnerable to . Also, one of Nasus' core items, , further reduces attack speed, and has armor, making any auto-attack champion a very poor choice against Nasus, unless they manage to kill him early and snowball and deny his farm. The only exception is , due to his immunity to attack speed slows. * is a strange, yet effective option against Nasus. This is because all the damage from is reflected by Thornmail's passive. Not only that, but Thornmail has armor, which mitigates the damage taken from Siphoning Strike, as Nasus rarely purchases armor penetration items. Thornmail also counter Nasus' passive lifesteal. ** This item can be effective if your champion has a lot of sustain. For example, and champions who can buy lifesteal items, such as , and the aforementioned (which can combine his build of crits and lifesteal, with a and Thornmail, to be able to 1x1 a late game Nasus) * Building Tenacity will reduce the duration of . However, remember that its maximum slow will be applied quicker than usual due to the shortened duration. * Nasus is susceptible to crowd control. Ranged champions should invest in a or to prevent him from getting into melee range. * Stacking health will only make stronger. Build armor and magic resist as well. * As mentioned above, Nasus has insane 1v1 potential, but poor teamfighting potential. Because of this, most Nasus will splitpush. This is because not only Nasus will have a lot of free farm, but his Siphoning Strike can quickly destroy towers, also his dueling potential makes difficult for enemies to stop Nasus alone. This can potentially force enemies to have to send more than one member of their team to stop Nasus, or force them to sacrifice a tower. ** This can backfire against Nasus team, however. Because Nasus will splitpush most of time, he will have to leave his team with one less member for teamfights. Therefore, Nasus will have to make sure his teammates can win teamfights without his presence, or at least stall and avoid losing towers to the opposing team. Your team can take advantage of this: if you force teamfights against Nasus team and take their towers, and/or splitpush a different lane. This will force Nasus to either stop splitpushing and go help his team (therefore losing farm for his Siphoning Strike stacks) or risk losing the game without his presence at teamfights. * Nasus does not have strong wave clear across from , has no way in gap closing, and is a melee champion. As such, top lane champions with long range poke such as , , , , , , , , and can constantly poke Nasus early game and deny him farm. In addition, many of these champions have either some sort of crowd control or escape mechanism to limit Nasus's mobility and make it difficult for Nasus to chase down enemies. ** However, when playing a ranged top laner, it is important to note that most AP builds do not have any sustained damage (unless playing someone like ) and Nasus's late game strength comes from large amount of sustained damage with a single . As such, it is important to constantly poke Nasus to punish him getting close to a minion to farm and one should be cautious if s/he enters basic attack range as Nasus can punish you using and it is recommend to go for AD sustained damage builds to counteract Nasus lategame damage. ** is considered to be a strong counter to Nasus. First, his mitigates Nasus's damage and can also be used to deny stacks for Nasus's . 's movement speed slow can easily be mitigated by movement speed buff. has better early game damage with his and can slowly wither away Nasus's health. Finally, should Nasus ever get close to , can respond by placing down to further hamper Nasus's limited mobility he already has. Category:Champion strategies Category:Images copyrighted to Riot Games